Many pharmaceuticals and other medications are administered by injection. Increasingly, patients are injecting themselves as opposed to having to go to a doctor or hospital. Compared to swallowing a pill, injections can be complicated and uncomfortable. Patients are often confused about how to inject themselves and when to inject themselves. In some cases, it may be necessary for a clinical nurse educator to visit patients at their homes to help patients with injections, thus increasing the cost of treatment.
Known devices are focused on providing safe storage conditions for injectable materials. Other devices may include devices that function as sophisticated alarm clocks. There is a need for systems, devices, and methods that can enable a remote monitoring of patient compliance, such as the administration of an injection in the patient's home.
People often take one or more injectable medications several times a day to maintain or improve their health. Often, these medications or supplements must be taken at specific times each day. If medications or supplements are not taken at the proper times, individual health may be jeopardized. For example, failure to take a prescribed medication for treatment of diabetes can result in severe health consequences including death. Further, non-compliance with a prescribed regimen of one or more medications, particularly in the elderly and the aging population of “baby boomers”, can result in billions of dollars of unnecessary health care costs.
Some people who take one or more medication a day are able to take medications without assistance. However, other people who take one or more medication or supplement a day require a reminder or the assistance of a care taker. Care takers may be one or more members of the patient's family or other individuals, such as friends, nurses, nurse's aids and the like. It can be difficult for a patient or a care taker to organize a patient's medications or supplements to insure compliance with a predetermined schedule. Further, it can be extremely difficult to monitor compliance with multiple medication schedules. Failure to properly monitor compliance can result in catastrophic health consequences to the patient and high levels of care taker anxiety, which can lead to increased health problems for care takers.
Known devices have severe limitations. One such limitation is the need to remind the patient to take their medication when the patient is away from the dispensing unit. Another such limitation is the inability for a user or a care taker to remotely monitor a patient's compliance with a medication schedule.
The present invention relates generally to devices and methods that include one or more sensors to time stamp the opening or closing of a storage box drawer or box lid utilized to store injectable or other medications. The devices can also include one or more sensors to record the temperature, such as the minimum and the maximum temperature, during storage or indicate the presence or absence of an individual dose, such as a syringe stored in a particular location. The devices can include one or more batteries and a wireless technology protocol, such as bluetooth or Wi-Fi, for exchanging data over distance from fixed units such a medicine storage containers and mobile devices, such as smart phones or computer tablets or other wireless personal area networks (PANs).
The present invention provides a communication channel between patients and healthcare providers, which will render home visits infrequent or unnecessary. The present invention solves these difficult problems in a novel manner.
Interactive medicine storage systems including multifunctional interactive wireless devices such as smart phone having programmable software that can communicate with one or more medicine storage box or dispenser and methods for monitoring and improving patient compliance using such systems are disclosed herein.